


Seabirds

by sixpences



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: F/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-30
Updated: 2007-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-03 02:09:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixpences/pseuds/sixpences
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-AWE, Jack has a reflective morning. Written for <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/je_challenge/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/je_challenge/"><b>je_challenge</b></a> challenge 9.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seabirds

For a man who's seen the world end and the pieces put back together again, a mere hat should not be so disconcerting.

Jack's not slept the whole night through in quite some time, and it's a little odd to wake with no temptation to roll back into the blankets, no tiredness skittering at the back of his mind. The sunlight streaming through the stern windows has the pale look of the morning watch, still a little too early for anything like breakfast. Turning over, he sees two long golden hairs curled on the pillow, the sheets rumpled from where Elizabeth was sleeping. Her hat is hanging nonchalantly from the back of a chair.

It's been a month. A month since that strange falling-together, so many battles and skirmishes that they all run together in his mind, Norrington clinging dripping to the side of the _Pearl_, Barbossa's cackling lost in the screech of the gale, the numb expression on Cutler Beckett's face as a thin line of smoke rose from the barrel of Elizabeth's pistol. There are still shots echoing around the ship like unwanted ghosts, bad memories that will linger at the bottom of bottles like all the others, hoping to drown.

He's woken to this before of course, many times; some woman's scent in his blankets, a man's belt coiled beside the bed. Bootstrap's shirt always used to crumple in strange shapes on the floor. He's done the same too, left traces of himself around a lover like he intended to stay, as if there were anything more permanent about his boots on their sides in a corner than the murmured promises he's long learned not to make. And he's fairly sure he'll wake again someday to a colder bed and a cabin that seems a little more empty, another notch carved out of the room by her absence. Elizabeth's hands are warm against his skin in the starlight, but that doesn't really mean anything. He knows by now.

And yet. He pulls on his shirt roughly, fiddling with the laces as he pads over to the table. She's moved the maps around, the callipers pointing down the African coast to the Cape of Good Hope. Weatherby Swann had the good sense not to neglect his daughter's scientific education, and she's fast learning how to apply Newton to the vagaries of the weather and the stars, all the little calculations that keep them afloat and moving on, always. The wind can't ever stop.

Marty's just coming down from the quarterdeck as Jack opens the cabin door, and the tiny man nods and smiles as he passes. Ghosts or no, the _Black Pearl_'s still a pirate ship, and that mean's it's a home just as much as it's a menace. There's snoring belowdecks more often than there's cannon-roar. Straightening his own hat, Jack steps through the door and turns to look up to the helm.

Elizabeth is standing at the wheel, her shoulders set confidently, the wind tousling her loose hair, but he can see something uncertain in the way her hands grip the spokes. She must spot him out of the corner of her eye, because she glances down and smiles at him, spreading a warmth in the pit of his stomach that's not unfamiliar, though it's been a while. Ascending the stairs, he notices Gibbs hovering a few feet behind her- there's half rum-soaked superstition and half some sort of protectiveness that's not for the ship alone in his stance.

"Good morning Jack," she says, blinking some stray strands of hair out of her eyes. He reaches out a hand to brush them back for her.

"Morning Bess," he replies, and there's an ease to it that he likes. He might even lean over and kiss her if she weren't quite so essentially engaged; instead he slips an arm around her waist and lets her lean slightly against him. Gibbs seems satisfied that Jack's not about to let her run the _Pearl_ into the nearest reef and heads below, leaving them alone on the quarterdeck. High above, a petrel curves upwards towards the sharp blue of the sky.

"You left your hat in the cabin, you know," he says amiably.

"So I did." He's still getting used to the gentleness in her voice, with no sudden death looming on the horizon, the voice he imagines Will might have heard around the clang of iron and the town bustle. There was no word of the _Dutchman_ at their last port.

Elizabeth's still gripping the spokes a little too tightly, as if the wheel might slip out of her grasp if she's not careful. It shouldn't, in this weather, but she's learned to keep a close eye on what she can. The golden hair against his cheek smells of salt air and warm.

Jack thinks about the callipers, wonders if there's still time to make a run across the Atlantic before the worst of the storm season. He'd like to take her to where the beaches run into the high grasslands, where the lionesses lay in the shade of the blackwood trees and even the air feels strange. Her hip is pressed against his thigh and it feels comfortable there, right, and if it's only for a little while that doesn't lessen the thing. Somewhere belowdecks someone is brewing coffee, and the sun is climbing up the eastern sky.

It's a fine day to be free.


End file.
